Plant Tissue Culture Unit screams for support

An Agriculturist on Monday appealed to the government to support and commercialise the unit for the development of high yielding and disease resistant crop varieties to ensure food security.

D.r Elizabeth Acheampong, officer in-charge of the Plant Tissue Culture Unit of the Botany Department, University of Ghana said the country was losing many plant varieties and stressed that it was necessary for all botany students to be trained in biotechnology and plant tissue culture to equip them with skills that would preserve such disappearing varieties.

Dr. Acheampong made the remark after taking the 12 participants attending the fourth international training course in plant tissue culture at Legon to tour the laboratory facilities at the unit.

The 21-day training course, which began on Monday, is being organised by the Botany Department of the University of Ghana and sponsored by the United

Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU/INRA). Participants, made of plant technologists, researchers and lecturers are from Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Tanzania and South Africa.

The course would equip them with modern plant culture techniques skills to conserve plants outside their natural environments. Plant hybrids under breeding at the centre, which was started in 1990, include varieties of yam, pineapple, cassava, plantain and cocoyam.

Dr. Acheampong said pineapple, yam, cocoyam, and potato farmers, for example, have asked the Centre to develop stronger varieties for production on commercial scale, but limited and delayed financial support from the government through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) have prevented the Centre from fully serving farmers who place orders with the Centre. She said the Centre has a great potential, but lack of resources has prevented it from fully operating.

Opening the course, Professor William Asumaning, Dean of the Faculty of Science stressed that genetically modified plants, although presently controversial, may in the future be useful to enhance food security in Sub-Saharan-Africa.

He stressed the need to use tissue culture techniques to prevent plant diseases, and also conserve plants being lost to bushfires and over-exploitation. Professor Asumaning stressed that it was an urgent duty to educate the populace of the dangers of deforestation and uncontrolled game hunting.

"Future generations after us must have some flora and fauna to live on. They should not have course to castigate us for our careless use and destruction of our heritage," Prof Asumaning said.

Dr Konadu Acheampong, Programme Officer of UNU/INRA, said as Africa entered the 21st century, it was faced with the daunting task of reversing the degradation of natural resources of the continent. He said the degradation of the natural resources had manifested itself in the disappearance of precious plant species, including medicinal plants, critical to rural livelihoods. Dr Acheampong called for accurate determination of indigenous African crops and useful plants to be tapped for the people of Africa through the application of science and technology.